Five Failed Weapons That Scarlet Invented
by flecksofpoppy
Summary: Five Failed Weapons that Scarlet Invented  And the One that Didn't . Written for the FF Land "Five Things" challenge. Canon fuckery.


**1. A Tube of Lipstick**

Scarlet's application to the Shinra General Electric Company has a lipstick smear on it. When Mr. Shinra first sees it (as he's known at that time), he mistakes it for blood, and can feel something hum inside of him like the Mako machinery he designed.

The applicant is blonde, and her hair is untouchable and stiff, sprayed tight with hairspray so that every time she moves, the shadow she casts is sharp and unyielding.

_"And why do you think you would be an asset to this corporation?"_he asks.

And she tells him that she's smart, that she's driven, and that the smell of Mako makes her hot.

They look at each other, and the red color of her dress matches the red color of her lips, which matches the red smear over her application; and Mr. Shinra feels the warmth when they fuck in a narrow bed later that night.

Living quarters in the foundling company were small back then.

_"You're hired."_

And she is free.

**2. Mighty Grunt**

It's as fine a name as any for her minions, her hands made of heavy shell artillery.

When she gets pregnant, she wants to lose this burden as easily as she shed her old name; Mr. Shinra says that the color in her cheeks reminds him of warmth, of blood, of the explosion of cannons and dying roses.

She is sitting in her apartment alone, red fingernails smoothing over the velvet ballroom-length dress that has been laid on her bed with a bundle of decaying roses. She barely fits into it, her stomach swollen; and inside a swaddle of soft burgundy fabric, she shudders and drowns herself in the smell of death wrapped in common paper.

When it finally ends, her voice sounds like the scream of metal against metal against flesh, the wails of heavy shell artillery.

Mr. Shinra's wife is from a wealthy family of a corporate partner. She dyes her hair blonde as part of a legally bonding contract, and she's afraid of him. She likes fresh roses, dresses the color of the sky, and the executive apartments are close enough that Scarlet hears her crying heavily in the night.

The President looks over Scarlet's shoulder at the cannon for which she has drawn up preliminary plans. Somehow, their engineering degrees earned from the same university no longer seem to matter right now; they both see the flaws, they both see the explosions that will inevitably happen. When she suggests hooking it to the Mako reactors, he doesn't answer; instead asks, _"Have you seen him lately?"_

She lies and says that she went down to see him last week, says that she loves him.

She loves her blueprint, her gun, the flaws. Loves that Mister President sees _her_, sees her explosive mistakes.

And she says, _"How would you fix this error?"_

He says he's too busy, that blueprints aren't the same as the green gold he's found.

She leaves his office (located on the top floor now), and remembers a narrow bed, remembers the cold metal slats that held them together, two strangers coming together to build something.

Years pass as quickly as daylight. She hates him, the truth obscured by gold, and ironically, it is always gold that they will have between them, both green and blond. Because in this young city, nothing is red except blood.

He gets fat; he gets lazy and stupid and _old_. She says to him one night, _"If you touch me again, I'll kill you."_

And he believes her, because he still has enough self awareness to know that he has spawned a monster beyond his control.

_"My son,"_ she says, _"my beautiful, golden son, will succeed you before your natural death."_

Rufus grows old enough to be a traitor, and he is. Lazard grows old enough to be anything he wants, and he is good. Scarlet hates his slum slut mother.

The last of her minion machines die in the sewers, executed by the ones that she tried to execute, and the snake begins to swallow itself, drunk on the taste of its own tender keratin.

**3. Air Buster**

Air Buster is a collector of parts, a giant lethal vacuum. Scarlet remembers a childhood game of pulling the wings off ladybugs, gathering up the delicate shells. She had three jars full of red and black wings by the time she was old enough to leave home.

Rufus keeps things in jars too; he just doesn't know it yet. He doesn't visit the Science Department often. A mistake.

Scarlet faces him from across the boardroom table where she has stared at him for the past 17 years; he no longer screams.

_"Hopefully you'll prove to be a competent heir,"_she says.

_"You look like a slut,"_ he says back to her. _"Why did my father ever hire you?"_

She laughs. She strokes his face and he flinches away; she looks at his hair, the same shade as hers.

When she doesn't answer, he just stares at her, expression closed, and then says, _"Bad dye job. Like my mother."_

She's proud of him.

_"I'm the head of your Weapons Development department,"_ she says, _"now shut up, and learn how to replace your father, or else I'll kill you myself, you simpering little brat."_

The love wells in her heart.

Air Buster is a collector of parts. She's seen Hojo pour human matter out of the small chamber in the center-the remains of victims-and press the samples neatly between glass microscope slides. Each one looks a rose petal.

In her sleep, she is sure she can feel the cylinder exploding when AVALANCHE destroys it.

**4. Sister Ray**

The monster that rises out of the sea is a beautiful object, a diamond ring, a hard unyielding shape that drags its feet so slowly it seems to float.

She wraps the Planet in and around itself, pumping its lifeblood from inside and shooting it out again, hooked up to industrial tubes and wires and trapped there in Midgar, staked to the ground by green gold.

No one thing has ever known her like this; she wishes she could exchange some sketches with the creator of the plodding death that has come for them. She wishes.

**5. Proud Clod**

Proud Clod holds her at its center, red and gold and magnificent as Midgar slowly starts to crumble, as the WEAPONS lumber toward her, as the burning sky bends with heat. She can't help but admire it all.

It's rupturing.

She smooths on lipstick.

Roses everywhere: dying, large, expansive.

She bleeds, and closes her eyes as explosions bloom in shades of red, orange, black.

**And the one that didn't:**

Rufus asks Tseng: "Did you know my mother?"

Tseng thinks of Veld's daughter, thinks of his own desires and shame. And since Rufus is stained with stigma, and as pale as the white suit he still insists on wearing, and burned in unseen places, Tseng replies, "Yes. I did."

So Rufus, lying in the bed, asks for a story before he dies.


End file.
